This week, 4,500 civilian workers at nearby Scott Air Force Base will receive furlough notices — a troubling reminder for Davis, who won his seat last fall by just 1,002 votes.

Enyart’s no better off: He pledged to protect Scott during his 2012 campaign, but at last weekend’s St. Patrick’s Day parade in his hometown of Belleville, several people shouted, “Stop the sequester!” as he walked by tossing green beads to children.

“Certainly, in my district, we’re in crisis stage,” Enyart told POLITICO after marching in the parade.

This tale of two districts is a reminder for some in Washington who still think about sequester as an abstract political fight. On the ground, the cuts are real — and so are the political consequences.

Davis, who holds a part of Abraham Lincoln’s old district and the state capital of Springfield — is considered one of the best pickup opportunities in 2014 for Democrats. After all, he had the narrowest margin of victory last cycle for any successful Republican.

To Democrats, the thinking is that Davis’s constituents in rural Illinois and the college towns of Champaign, Normal and Springfield will be so upset with Republican leadership over the spending cuts that they will send him packing next November.

The two congressmen said during interviews Saturday back in their home state that they’re on the case since they’re willing to work across the aisle to cut a deal. But that spirit of bipartisanship hasn’t stopped their national parties from launching attack ads that pin the blame for sequester on the other guy.

For Republicans, their strategy is to go directly after Enyart, a former leader of the Illinois National Guard who anchored his 2012 campaign around the message that he could protect the region’s largest employer, Scott Air Force Base.